Good stewards of the planet

We share our lease on the planet with the rest of mankind during our lives. We should all want to pass it on in better environmental shape when we die. Each one of us can play our part and help use the planet’s natural gifts in a sustainable and good neighbourly way.

Some constituents want to know what I am doing , so let me remind my readers.

I support planting many more trees. I have planted new trees in my constituency in public areas . I support the government’s initiative to have more national forest, and local Council initiatives to have more trees and shrubs as a counter weight to more development.

I support local planning policies that protect more of our countryside, and wish to see slower rates of development in the next Plan.

I have cut food miles when buying from local shops. I now buy all my temperate foods from local or British sources to cut down lorry, ferry and airfreight transport.

When in London I now walk or use the tube for practically all journeys.

I usually take my holidays in the UK to avoid jet travel.

I avoid all single use plastic bags.

I use the Wokingham Council recycling facilities. I encourage better control of waste to prevent litter.

I have improved the thermal insulation, heating and heating controls at my home to cut energy use and improve thermal efficiency.

The government states its wish to be the greenest government ever. It should want to do more to extend out forests and areas of natural beauty, to protect our coast and fishing grounds, to control waste and to promote clean water and air. It should also do more to save energy, improve thermal efficiency and raise environmental standards throughout the public sector.

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235 Comments

All sensible stuff and saves money too. Wear a jumper and thermals and turn the stat down a bit helps you slim too. Though my wife and daughters tend to complain! Less meat is not a bad idea either and eat things in season but from a market not a super market.

But buying a new electric car is far less green that continuing to run a small old one. Yet the government has perverse incentives to do the former. Why. Taxis are less efficient than private cars (they need a driver and often are empty) so why do they get special lanes? Buses too can often be far less efficient than cars especially full cars. Cutting subsidies for wind and PV would be a good green policy too. They make little sense.

Walking, fuelled as it is by food, is not actually that energy efficient (unless you live off just porridge perhaps). Statistically far more dangerous than a car too (about 12 times more I think (last time I looked) though it depends on where you are (city or rural). Nor are buses often they have low average occupancy (single figures usually overall) need drivers and staff and take far longer routes than a door to door car. Plus they keep stopping and starting every few hundred yards blocking the roads for others.

Heat only the rooms you actually need to use regularly, as a child we rarely had more than the kitchen and living room heated, bedrooms were never heated. I often remember the odd frozen glass of water next to my bed in the morning. One got dressed rather quickly as I recall.

If CO2 were doing what is claimed for it I could worry about it. The “magic numbers” of 1.5 deg C and 2 deg C have no scientific basis and in any event we are already at 1.2 C, over whatever pre-industrial period they decide to use this week. Originally it was 1750, now it has morphed into 1860.

2 degrees was first mooted by an economist William Nordhaus in 1975 and again in 1977. Ardent social control scientist Professor Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute grabbed it in 1995 and in 1996 got it accepted by the EU as a “target”, as if we could actually dial temperatures up or down as with a thermostat.

In 1988 dire projections of doom were issued by scientists if global temperatures reached 1 deg C over pre-industrial.

We are well past that but there has been no rise in the last 20 years. Met office data shows no rise in UK temperatures over the last 30 years, in spite of rising CO2.

When annual changes in CO2 are compared with annual changes in temperatures, at least for the UK there is no correlation.

The sheer volume of propaganda is quite concerning and dissenting voices from the thousands of scientists who disagree with the IPCC are now simply being censored, plain and simple. “the Science” is whatever the UN deems it to be and no criticism can be allowed,

The current hysteria has been deliberately fostered by the UN to stampede politicians into unwise legislation on energy policy in order to advance the top down control the Social Development Goals of Agenda 21 and 2030.
Any weather event is now quite falsely claimed “caused by climate change”

The use of children to further their aims is quite despicable. The planet is not dying but science is.

http://www.factcheck.org allowing for manufacture, maintenance and decommissioning – wind energy creates 11gm of carbon per kw/hour – as opposed to 465gm per kw/hour for natural gas and 900gm per kw/hour for coal. Solar is 30 times less than coal allowing for manufacture etc.

Indeed over their life time (offshore ones) perhaps generate about as much electricity as the energy needed to build, install, connect and maintain them and the energy needed for their replacements. The energy they produce is not ‘on demand’ and so is worth far less and requires expensive back up. A virtue-signalling subsidised scam against the tax and bill payer.

Rubbish from the first word to the last. ‘And the energy needed for their replacement’ eh? So, when comparing energy sources you factor in the cost of building a coal fired power station, decommissioning it and building its replacement? No, thought not. How would that work for nuclear? A cost in the millions in the 1950s to build a nuclear power station + the cost of decommissioning (costs forever!) + £30 thousand million to replace it. Wow, how much does that make nuclear cost.

As for the energy being not on demand – yes we need storage. Just like hydro power needs dams. There was talk a while ago of a storage tower a kilometre in diameter and a kilometre high – off the coast of Belgium I think. The power of the tides would be harnessed to pump water into the tower and, when the tide was going out, the water would be released to drive turbines. But we need a bit of imagination for this stuff – and investment. As long as people like you are around we’ll get neither.

Tidal generators even a bigger scam than wind. Turbines in salt water suffer massive errosion and a tower you propose would possibly supply 10gw hours of electicity on a reducing scale. Not very much really.
During a high pressure period in December wind was contributing o.7% of demand. Candles please….
.

You obviously have not done the numbers. I you want to save Co2 wind farms do very little indeed and yes you have to cover the C02 output of the replacement one (if you think it through logically in C02 emission terms).

I would love you one day to provide the numbers (you so often keep talking about) both in terms of CO2 saved or not and of money spent or saved. Obviously you would account for the cost and pollution impact (CO2 in particular) of setting up these power stations (coal, oil, gas, wind, solar, tidal), of their maintenance and production phase during the lifetime of these power stations, including the cost of extracting and bringing the fuel to the stations, and the cost and possible pollution when dismantling them.

To help you start I give you a hint, some such studies have been around for years and are usually updated whenever a new technology appears (as a “prospective” document), then when it is implemented by this or that public or private company with or without subsidies, then again in some annual company reports. You could start with some interesting documents by, eg, BP, and/or some energy companies (say, SSE, British Gas, e.on, RWE and for a company aiming at providing most of its electricity from wind and solar, Ecotricity).

I agree that what is often missing in the whole landscape is related to the decommissioning as more often than not the companies involved could not care less after the profits have been collected for years: see for a recent example the North Sea platforms, which are now abandoned to rust without anybody to care for their end-of-life.

Good luck, it will be worth the time investment if anything to help you stop pulling the wool over your own eyes.

So Corbyn’s plans to steal 10% of shares from UK-based companies would see British pension funds lose £31bn, according to new research. Then we have his plans to fully end Non Dom status already (very damagingly) attacked by the economic illiterates Brown, Osborne and Hammond. Plus Corbyn (and Gove) want to destroy private schools and have a four day week. Then the want to steal properties off people too and destroy their value.

Corbyn and Mc Donnall really do know all the things they need to do to destroy the economy and kill the tax base in double quick time. Let us hope they can be kept away from any positions of power at all costs.

I am glad our kind host and many others are doing all they can to help save their ‘local’ , and I do mean ‘local’ environment. But ‘local’ to whom ? Certainly not China, or even South East Asia, who produce most of the pollutants and plastic waste in the world.

We have a very romanticised view of the Earth. We have been made to believe that the Earth was like it is today, always. Well it wasn’t ! The Earth’s climate, even its tilt axis has changed. the animal and plant species has evolved and been made extinct. The Earth has shown, throughout history, that it can be violent and unforgiving to all, including man. We cling to this tiny rock in space, spinning helplessly around and insignificant star in one of a billion galaxies. And that star once it has consumed all its fuel will, should we still be here, kill us !

When it comes to the environment it is good to give and try to preserve. But a little bit of perspective in the grand scheme of things need to be taken into consideration. We are not as important as we like to make ourselves think and planet, to quote someone in politics, doesn’t give a, “Flying Flamingo !”

All very worthy but hardly going to offset the damage caused by coal fired power stations across the continents, habitat destruction, what about the desolation caused by palm oil etc, wood chippings shipped vast differences to fuel our power stations?

How is our vast overseas aid budget being used to make a real difference where it matters, South America/Africa?

“How is our vast overseas aid budget being used to make a real difference where it matters, South America/Africa?”

It would appear, none to the ‘little people’, but their ‘leaders’ have done very nicely from it thank you and so have the businesses who sell private jets, yachts and limousines.

The way to make a real difference to these countries is to vastly reduce or remove the tariffs on the goods they sell, thus allowing them to trade themselves out of poverty, because if the goods were cheaper to buy, they would sell more. Simple supply and demand economics. Unfortunately the UK still belongs to a protectionist block who doesn’t appear to like that idea.

Yeah, it might be better to trade with countries that are close to us – and that have similar standards of living. Otherwise, who knows, we might find loads of cheap imports decimate our manufacturing industry. Oh, hang on …

Never mind the destruction of the rain forests and natural habitats. Just take a look at what is going on in the UK regarding the amount of green belt now being built on. All these naturalists go on about climate change wiping out entire species but the teal problem is the lack of habitat when the bulldozers go in and large fields and woodland are decimated. Can we please get real.

You miss the point completely but then the Tories have been doing this for years. This isn’t about the environment. This is about politics. It is all about politics

The poisonous left have hijacked this issue to promote their cause and see it as a conduit for the indoctrination of young people. Malignant Labour especially have embraced this issue to stoke contrived resentment and anger allowing them to manipulate and control the emotions of young people. The left have infected the education system and are also using this issue to promote their cause

As an aside. Governments, the State and the public sector are the main culprits of waste and destruction of the earth’s natural resources. The private sector cannot afford waste as this affects their profit margins. With the State, they have no incentive to cut down on waste. Indeed waste is encouraged in the State sector. They’ve been living beyond their means and will continue to do for eternity

I know one thing. Left wing extremists couldn’t care less about the environment but see it as an issue to indoctrinate as many young minds as possible.

The Tories need only explain to the public that Labour and the left care not one jot about the earth, they care only for the political opportunity it affords them to emotionally and psychologically control as many young people as possible

Spot on. It’s all so blindingly obvious. If the Environment and Climate Change warriors were serious they’d be demonstrating in Beijing or Mumbai but no it has a political purpose to garner young lefty votes here in UK

I was mulling over the idea of crowd funding the fare to China for all these UK-based climate warriors so they can disrupt the people who are producing the lion’s share of the ‘damage’. I’d respect them more if they did.

It may well prove to be a lesson in democracy or rather, how democracy and the freedom to protest is ruthlessly put down when it doesn’t agree with the ethos or policies of a one-party state.

Eco-warriors are fine when picking on a soft target, but they would earn their corn and the respect of the wider community where they take the battle to the real enemy. They should at least acknowledge the UK is trying to be cleaner and greener, and afford us a little latitude. Being a nuisance is not winning them many friends.

Politics indeed but also money- diverting billions of our taxes into other people’s hands. All lubricated by paid ‘consultants’ many whom are politicians or Lords and paid ‘lobbyists’. They declare their interests and fees, but then try to screw the tax payer and reward they paymasters anyway.

Climate change is the new religion, a means to control peoples minds, the children have been told that their future will be a fiery hell unless they follow the rules. -> Sound familiar?

The BBC consider it heresy to challenge the so called “science”, which seems to be based on computer models that are fed with data that has been invented to support their theory. -> Rubbish in/ Rubbish out.

The BBC’s science editor commenting on the school strikes yesterday referred to the numbers of kids involved and the polling data etc., but nothing at all about science. I guess that’s why the hysteria has infected politicians so badly, they’re worried about being labelled climate heretics or “non believers”.

There is no need to comment on the science. It is proven. In the same way the BBC does not need to comment that the world is round it does not need to comment that the climate is changing and man is responsible for the speed of this change.

The flaw with the BBC is that it continues to invite on climate change deniers – like Lord Lawson, Lilley, Dellingpole and so on who spout their fact free nonsense. It is no surprise that climate change deniers and Brexiteers are usually the same people.

So Andy, please tell us when you are giving up your car, going to the South of France, heating your home, buses. trains, your electricity and all the other things you say causes global warming, holes in the ozone layer, global cooling, climate change (all theories we have had over the last 30 years, including Prince Charles and his deadline for the end of the world which expired some years ago based of course ‘on the science’.

“It is no surprise that climate change deniers and Brexiteers are usually the same people.”

Indeed – that they are bright, think it through and are right on both counts. Though we do not actually “deny climate change”. It always has done and always will do (and mankind indeed has some impact as do millions of other things). We just deny the wilder exaggeration that are clearly unscientific drivel and a new religion.

I saw that snowflake training day was in full flow yesterday, these kids really haven’t a clue what’s going on apart from one or two, all they found was a day off school which I would have welcomed back in my early days, this climate change rubbish as replaced global warming which was also a load of hog wash, these kids have been brainwashed by the leftists alarmist rants into thinking the world is going to end in 10 years, was watching the co leader of the flip flop wearing tree hugging cave dweller Bartley spewing is bile yesterday they really are a bunch of losers , what do they think the country would be like if we go back to the dark ages with no modern day tools to hand and the Everest mountain high of horse manure and rivers of horse pee all over spreading desease , in the early days of all this rubbish David Bellamy said all that was needed was to replace all lights bulbs with low energy efficiency ones, which these alarmist didn’t want to hear because there funding would disappear so Mr Bellamy was silenced

Yesterdays ridiculous protest was nothing short of a day of indoctrination, these youngsters will be in tears when they are told the can no longer have their mountains of multi coloured plastic toys or mobile phones etc.

They have obviously not given a thought to where the materials for their placards come from or even the amount of energy that had to be generated to produce them, maybe they should have stayed in school as their education is lacking in these matters.

I passed through the Birmingham “happening” yesterday on my way to a lunch meeting in the Jewellery Quarter-it had a hippy vibe-a band playing(acoustic,naturally),lots of squealing and “**** Boris” placards being waved about.

On my return a couple of hours later when it had mostly dispersed,I could see all the steps on the approach to Birmingham Council HQ were covered wth chalk-scrawked slogans-I have never seen such a concentration of obscenities in one place before(spelling was mostly good though).The only family-friendly one was “Greta is R hero.”

Whilst I agree with your main point you are misplaced in thinking staying in school is the solution. Is it not teachers who are in on these strikes? Where do you think children get this fake science from?

It is up to us to show children where the truth lies and that they are being misled by their teachers. We owe them this because fake science and revolutionary politics is leading to their mental ill health and causing unnessarary anxiety.

Good joke… Yes, it’s today’s schoolchildren that split the atom, phased out coal, developed undersea exploration to extract hydrocarbons from the remains of ancient forests and developed the renewable energy sources that today, to the nearest percentage point, provide 1% of the globe’s energy needs.

Why do governments allow planes to fly with loads of vacant seats or allow people to fly first class (circa doubling emissions) or private jets (far worse still). Or fly food around when we could eat more seasonal fare. If the EU or UK governments really believed these climate alarmist and CO2 devil gas exaggerations they surely would not do so. Why are people allowed to burn wood (millions of tons chopped down, imported and burned at Drax) or to have bonfire nights and garden fires (rather than having to bury it and/or use all wood for construction etc.)

The answer is simple either these politicians do not believe it at all or do not give a damn. Or they are just stupid and scientifically illiterate and/or they are virtue signalling liars and hypocrites. What other possible explanations?

Not really, there is good, well thought through, red tape and bad damaging red tape. About 5% is good and 95% bad.

Interesting that some rather foolish female panellist on Any Questions felt it was just fine to complain at some man for ‘mansplaining’. I suppose an equivalent for a man to say might be ‘stop wittering woman’. But I cannot imagine many men daring to do this though.

The trouble is quite a lot of women do need a bit of mansplaining in some areas. Only a rather small proportion of females seem to know even the basics of physics, energy and engineering for example.

Reasonable steps to conserve the environment are not beyond those of us whose parents grew up in poverty and had to survive wartime capacities.Our early years had recycling through glass bottles,less food was prepacked and items were manufactured to last.
So let governments take sensible steps by all means, but while children March, fast food delivery firms abound on tv and eco-celebrities jet around the world.
This doublethink nonsense needs to stop: let people give me three ways that they have materially changed their life or they can take their preaching elsewhere.

Let’s see the parents of these children insist that they walk or cycle to school, that they don’t fly overseas on holiday or ‘gap’ years, that they re-cycle/re-use their siblings old clothes, that they have just one present for Christmas & Birthdays, are never allowed canned drinks or pre-packaged/fast food – or to order it for delivery.

And perhaps their parents should stop driving ever larger SUVs (and manage with just one small vehicle, kept for more than one or two years), keep household electronics till they fail (rather than keep updating to the latest models), insist on white goods that can actually be repaired and have a working life of decades not several years, grow their own vegetables, clean their own car (with a bucket preferably) and most importantly – limit themselves to no more than two children.

That might begin to make a difference (more than allowing your kids a day off school) – but I’m not holding my breath….

I applaud your work on tree planting and similar. That’s far more vital than the hysteria over climate.

It is frightening that despite 31,487 qualified scientists stating there is no evidence linking CO2 with warming (ref htts://petitionproject.com), hysteria akin to a cargo cult has arisen around a sincere but scientifically illiterate schoolgirl, abetted by the BBC. The government’s preposterous zero carbon policy looks set to shut down most of what remains of our industry.

Much truth in that, though CO2 does warm to a degree. But millions of other factors and feedbacks affect the weather and climate. The planet is not anything like as sensitive as the alarmists pretend it is. Anyway a little warmer is no bad thing. Higher CO2 concentration also greens the planet wonderfully and gives far more food for both animals and humans.

As a strong believer in sovereignty, I also see potential minefields in Brexit destabilising the Union (which is also very important to our country). A clear, strong plan is needed here. And also with a global political plan for dealing with global security issues that affect Europe as a whole. Let’s not forget, one reason the EU was set up was in response to WW2 that killed hundreds of thousands of our men and women and caused much devastation to our cities and economy. Also, we need a plan to have the best commercial and cultural relations with Europe after Oct 31.

Lastly, we don’t just want to survive all these minefields, we should aim to flourish as a nation – economically, culturally, with happy families and people in general. This is a big, big ask but I believe definitely possible but only through, ultimately, the power and grace of a Higher Being – The traditional Christian God of this nation and others. May God protect and bless our country.

Nobody would disagree with any of the measures taken by JR.
However, they are only necessary because of what govts have done.
Who secretly decided upon mass immigration?
Who chopped down trees and laid waste meadows to build houses?
Who built motorways?
Who decided that “ relocation” of jobs was necessary? And why?
Who handed local commerce over to supermarkets allowing small, single paper bag shops to be put out of business?
Oh and what about the tiny fact that ALL goods are swathed in masses of plastic?
Or are some plastics above reproach?
And who implemented the regulations from Brussels that also undermined them?
Oh and by the way at this very moment a neighbour’s motorbike is standing totally unattended in the road, engine running, pumping out goodness knows what.
Virtue signalling by govt will need a police force to support it! Especially when the uk govt starts to sort out the pollution created by the rest of the world.
Let’s also worry about noise pollution…that makes people ill too.

Oh…our recycling bins were all removed.
Our one remaining local tip has been “ reorganised” to the point where it is unusable and anyway you have to take your rubbish by car ( I guess you could walk with a handcart) along overcrowded roads ( which were not overcrowded until the past 5 years or so…all the building…all the new houses…all the three car families!).
So we have to do our recycling in PLASTIC BAGS and big PLASTIC wheelie bins.
The only saving the planet needs is from politicians.

If you do not like ‘mass immigration’ – and we know most of you on here don’t like any immigration – then you have more incentive than most to tackle climate change.

In the coming decades climate change will create tens of millions of refugees. People whose homes are submerged as sea levels rise, people in area starved of water, people in areas which extreme weather makes uninhabitable.

Plenty of these climate change refugees will end up here. They will literally be our problem.

Correct it doesn’t, two recent studies reconfirmed that temperature drives CO2 levels not vice versa. The planet is greening up as the CO2 levels increase. Storm prone areas are by nature storm prone, the number of severe storms has also decreased in recent decades. A lot of the flood problems are down to human intervention in the environment not climate. I don’t think any of the predictions of catastrophic climate change have to date come to fruition, hence the dome sayers keep moving the goal posts.

Just the sort of unscientific emotional signalling that our youngsters are being exposed to. Sir John, you really need to get a group together within your party to actually explain the facts. The fact that the terms of reference of the IPCC is to decide what steps to take against human caused climate change does give a clue that they are starting with the hypothesis set in stone. Senior members of the organisation have already announced that it has nothing to do with climate, but the re-distribution of wealth. Forgive me, but that is a political rather than scientific objective. When the fanatics try to ban dissent and even pres for criminalisation we have got to start worrying.

Please give us a cogent scientifically viable description of how exactly a molecule of gas representing just over 400 parts per million of the earth’s atmosphere affects the weather so much that it produces storms and floods.
You will be the first person in the world to do this. So good luck.

Then read some proper meteorology and atmospheric science, and grasp that the sun radiates mainly at about 6,000K, at wavelengths to which CO2 is transparent. The Earth re-radiates this at about 300K, mostly at wavelengths that CO2 absorbs, trapping some of the sun’s energy.

If the atmosphere did not do this, then Earth would be frozen solid. If it trapped all of it, then it would be a furnace.

Atmospheric CO2 has increased by 45%, yes, by forty-five percent, since pre-industrial times.

The concentrations of CFCs and HFCs are parts per billion and trillion, and they damage(d) the ozone layer over both Antarctica and the Arctic. Water vapor, averaged the whole global troposphere, is about 1%. As such H2O is responsible for the whole hydrological cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, energy absorbed and released in these phase changes feeding or not storms and droughts).
As already mentioned a couple of times (but to no avail to people who could not care to open even an elementary atmospheric physics book by Dorling Kindersley) the important bit is not so much the concentration of these gases, but the photochemical potential for the CFCs, HFCs, and the radiative effect for H2O, CO2, O3, CH4, N2O, and other ‘atmospheric opacity enhancing’ aka “greenhouse” gases.
And yes, increasing CO2 concentration from 250 to 400 ppm has an impact.

You are at it again with your use of statistics Martin
A layer 6 meters thick around the planet sounds big.
But compared to the size of the Earth it is a tiny tiny percentage of the whole size.
I’ve used percentage because you like to use them to give excitement to your claims when it suits you.

Edward2, Just for the sake of showing you as( wrong ed), in your response to MiC, the argument should not be to compare the 6 m of CO2 to the 6371 km radius of the Earth (“the whole size”), but to the so many meters of the whole atmosphere assumed condensed on the surface at standard conditions of temperature and pressure (supposed to prevail at the surface). But obviously this might be beyond your understanding. After all as you have told us many times you are/were a worldwide businessman, so I guess you don’t need to know how to calculate, not even have a feel for orders of magnitude.

Still going at it hefner I see.
My post about the climate debate was in response to young Andy and his assertion that the science was settled and therefore no debate was allowed.
Your intervention into Martin’s comments was entirely different.
It concerned the way statistics are presented to give false appearances of magnitude.
Percentages or meters depending on how exciting they initially appear.
Then you wade in.
Carry on if it amuses you.

Piers Corbyn, unlike his brother, is worth listening to – Talkradio, James Whale , last evening. Like many of us he thinks man made climate change is rubbish and without any scientific evidence. Yes we are are polluting the planet and could make it uninhabitable for the excess population we have created and the developed lifestyle but the weather is determined by the solar system.

“There is now no debate about the science on climate change” No, the ones who think Climate Change exists now place any ‘debate’ on the basis of denying the Holocaust~ Climate Change Deniers.
But there some sensible people about. They do not debate Climate Change either for nothing has changed. Youth still does not have memories of any length worth debating.
When you are loading your Ark, don’t forget to take two polar bears this time. The last two , luckily, could swim but never got literary credit for it. Shame!

You also need to tackle the things which are actively wasting resources, e.g.
-People travelling on congested roads and waiting in queues because we have too many people per sq foot.
-Poor quality houses and buildings being thrown up, which won’t stand the test of time. The spin-offs are also wrecked local roads from vehicles delivering materials to site and even more congestion from occupiers of new houses.
–

As the population of the planet increases and becomes wealthier, the planet deteriorates.

Heating, airconditioning, fans, manufacturing. These are all effected by volume and wealth of people.

Climate change activists must convince us to go without but also convince the third world that they can not have our standard of living, either by coming to us without being invited or in their own countries.

Theresa May’s government declared that intention, John, I have heard no endorsement from the present one.

And there would be nothing to prevent their repeal, should a future Parliament wish it.

Most of your commenters seem not to accept the scientific consensus on climatology, and also demand that MPs reflect their views and opinions. I suspect that they are generally sceptical as to the merits of environmental protection laws.

This list involves a lot of self-discipline and sacrifice. In particular, the absence
of foreign holidays would be quite a drop in quality of life compared to
much of the last century. You say that the Government wants to be the
most green ever. What is its policy on condom provision and usage? Do
you know of any Government-recommended lifestyle changes there?

‘John Humphrys today lifts the lid on ‘institutional liberal bias’ at the BBC. Two days after retiring, the legendary broadcaster accuses the ‘Kremlin’-style corporation of being out of touch. He says its bosses ‘badly failed’ to read the nation’s mood on Europe and ‘simply could not grasp’ why anyone voted Leave. In an explosive memoir serialised from today in the Daily Mail, Remain-voting Humphrys pulls no punches after decades of being constrained by rules that stop journalists expressing opinions. The 76-year-old, who spent 33 years on Radio 4’s flagship news show Today, says he is now free of ‘the BBC Thought Police’ which has ‘tried to mould the nation into its own liberal-Left image’.

Well you do lead a virtuous life, though in support of what you tell us I agree with it and it does make economic sense.

The climate change zealots cannot quantify the relative effects of man and the sun on climate. Doing so would upset their self flagellation. I rather wish they would get the environment right and do it in a less emotive but more scientific way. Producing even cleaner diesel engines would be a step in the right direction. In terms of government this limits their ability to tax or to support their friends with windmills. It is however the right way to go because we do not have electricity generating capacity for current demand, the range of electric vehicles is limited and their cost is excessive. Our Parliament needs more engineers and scientists , but far fewer lawyers. The latter demonstrating just how incompetent they can be of late.

When I see government positively encouraging all those energy saving ideas you have adopted into modern house design and financially encouraging the same in existing homes I will begin to believe they are serious. Time is coming when these decisions will have to be made by our own government rather than leaving it to the EU.

The UK as a global contributor to pollution isn’t that big. We can’t curb the waste from the large contributors in the Far East and Americas, but we can do our bit.
The UK needs to stop immigration to this country immediately, especially from regions of the world where energy use per person is much lower. Currently keeping warm in Winter in this country largely means the burning of fossil fuels.
We also need to push back on the pressure to build more houses – bricks and cement needs large quantities of energy to produce, again the burning of fossil fuels.
If we could have a de-population policy, that would be the biggest contribution we could make to preserving the planet.
Cycling rather than using the car is also a good idea, for the pocket as well as the waistline. My observation of the bicycle/car ratio going past our house tells me the average Briton has little care for the planet.

Save more countryside….indeed, which means calling a halt to this latest crazy spate of house-building, that ultimately demands more roads, more energy and countless tons of plastic to provide all those ghastly pvc windows that are so-o-o good for the environment. Every place you go now, there are fields disappearing under rabbit-hutches, many of them poorly built. My county has gone from rural to semi-urban in less than a couple of decades, and still they’re building; traffic congestion in the south-west now demands ever more relief roads cutting across pristine marshes, SSSIs, beauty spots and farmland; in one village near me at least thirty to forty households are selling up en masse in the same road due to proposed motorway link roads. It’s intolerable.

How did this mass hysteria and idea that a 1 degree C rise will lead to an uninhabitable Earth.
The Extinction Rebellion extremists will be parading around with sandwich boards proclaiming ‘The End is Nigh’. Just like Religious Fanatics.
Perhaps they should be looking for another Planet to escape to. One where the climate is not naturally variable.

When I was a boy milk was delivered by the milkman who arrived by pony and trap. My mother or myself would go out to have a pint or two scooped from the urns and poured into the jugs we took out for the purpose.

The eco-fanatics arguments will have us go back to that if their logic trail is followed and they should not be encouraged by virtue signallers.

Having milk supplied by a local dairy which gets its milk from local farmers , is not a bad thing , I am in my 60`s , where I lived was supplied with milk by 1 local dairy farmer , who had the equipment to bottle his cows production of milk , 3 other farms within a radius of 10 miles did the same .

The ‘eco fanatics’ want to abolish our reliance and exploitation of mammals to feed us. Most people on our planet are unable to digest milk after they are weaned from their mothers. Vast numbers of them, particularly on the Indian sub continent, are vegetarians and have managed to feed themselves successfully and imaginatively on fruit and vegetables without having to slaughter other creatures.

So rather than going backwards our descendants will find our meat eating habit of today as repugnant as we find, lets say, slavery and torture of times past.

MH….So why are cows such protected species? They have to eat vegetation, they are not eaten by the humans, you claim the milk is not drunk….a wonderful privileged life! I think I will come back as a cow in India.

I wouldn’t advise it – cows there when out of milk are discarded to roam the towns, cities and villages to exist on scraps on the road, plastic, paper, dirty rotten food scraps and what they can steal from food vendors. They last out there miserable lives, sick, perhaps wounded and totally uncared for.

So Labour won’t be able to call Thatcher the milk snatcher anymore then Margaret if she ended up saving the world more excessive milk drinking weaned infants. Don’t give the government anymore money cutting ideas by weaning children off meat filled school dinners!

Actually I went off to read up on vegetarian Indians and read an interesting BBC report ‘The biggest myth, of course, is that India is a largely vegetarian country. But that’s not the case at all.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-43581122
The myth of the Indian Vegetarian Nation.

But you can do more via this blog and your fantastic speeches in parliament and get the debate started after a no deal brexit that is very much needed.

After brexit everyone has to come together and get rid of the gold standard, fixed exchange rate myths imposed on us by the EU and many ” fiscal conservatives”

That is what is held out as a financial constraint is usually not that at all. Typically, in macroeconomic policy the constraints are political and voluntarily imposed. The sophists then dress these political constraints up as financial constraints using gold standard type macroeconomic models which appear throughout the literature to avoid addressing the real issues. Issues that you have tried to address in many previous posts.

My assessment is that if the general populace was better educated in these matters – that is, understood the actual operational capabilities of the national government it would be very difficult for the politicians to conflate their own ideological desires with the concept of a financial constraint. In that context, telling us that we had to have 5 or 8 per cent unemployment and rising underemployment because the government cannot afford to purchase all the labour and even if it did it would be inflationary, takes on a different slant.

We would know that they could afford to fully employ the available workforce as long as their were sufficient real resources available to provide the extra food and other things the higher employment levels would invoke. This would then require a higher level of sophistication in the public debate. Are there the extra resources? How close to real capacity are we? That would then promote new research that focused on the nub of the problem rather than the array of dishonesty that parades as knowledge out there in the form of academic papers – which say the government has a financial constraint and will cause higher interest rates, higher taxes, higher inflation if it goes against it.

Businesses would also have to justify their opposition to true full employment in more sophisticated ways because we would all know that the usual reasons they give – again relating to government budget constraints – are all deeply flawed.

I also would not use the term “balance sheet policy restraints” because that implies that there are financial matters that are at play. There are not what there are is skills and real resources constraints.

That the public perception of rising public debt arising from the fact that we have been erroneoulsy conditioned (relentlessly) to equate the household budget with the sovereign government’s budget presents a problem to a government after brexit who wants to increase spending, cut taxes, slash business rates and VAT and corporation taxes.

These are all a political problem based on false understanding rather than an economic problem. Conservatives have to get rid of the fear after Brexit that there taxes will go if any of these things are implemented due to their false belief that theie taxes pay for this stuff.

As long as the private sector and public sector are given time to adjust to the increase aggregate demand so they can provide enough skills and real resources to absorb the tax cuts and increased government spending there would be no inflation. There are other ways to stop inflation rather than the blunt tool of taxes.

We have to make sure after we leave the EU with a no deal that voters become more and more informed they will actually engage in debate and ask questions of the politicians and commentators in general. Get rid of these gold standard, fixed exchange rate myths once and for all.

I joined a local Climate Change meeting yesterday, and was very impressed with the speeches made by young and old alike. We have been very slow to take on board the messages which have been around for many years but a lot of people at the grassroots level are now doing so. However, governments are always slow to change policies so, for instance, single use plastic bags are still offered in local shops and often bought by customers who buy just a couple of things and have a short walk to their car. Why not ban these bags completely as has happened in other countries? Also, Heathrow is set to get a 3rd runway even though we are being encouraged to fly less. There are many more examples, but as one of the students said yesterday “Why bother teaching us science in school if politicians won’t listen to the scientists?”

Alouette – were you told that it was reported in Aug 2019 · Sales of plastic bags in England’s largest supermarkets have fallen by 90% in the four years since the government introduced a 5p levy? ICAEW Economia

Environment secretary Theresa Villiers said, “No one wants to see the devastating impact plastic waste is having on our precious wildlife. Today’s figures are a powerful demonstration that we are collectively calling time on being a throwaway society.”

Carbonbrief.org Around 20% of the UK’s CO2 emissions in 2017 came from burning coal, oil and gas to produce electricity. This is down from 34% back in 1990.

Oil used for electricity generation has also declined, down from 11% of generation in 1990 to less than 1% today. These have largely been replaced by gas, wind and bioenergy.4 Feb 2019

I blame the government for not talking about our successes. The UK’s total CO2 emissions are currently 38% below 1990 levels and are now as low as emissions were back in 1890. With particularly large drops in 2014 and 2016.

The government need to lease or buy all ‘British made’ hybrid only vehicles and only allow those cars to be leased on mobility benefits from 2020 then the prices of these cars will drop for everyone, and second use vehicle users get them in a couple of years time, especially if the largest companies were also incentivised to switch their fleets for more economic to run vehicles that cost the same as regular cars (and that is the key)..

You won’t get success by a policy of banning things.
Top down enforcement wont work.
Encourage, incentivise, educate.
Allow people to change behaviour.
It is happening.
But there is a large part of the climate lobby for whom the power to ban other people from doing things is a big thrill.

Currently above Gatwick and Heathrow the are lots of airplanes circling round and round waiting for a free runway on which to land.
And planes queuing on the runwsy also burning fuel waiting for a free slot to take off.
So another runway at both airports would mean less waste of fuel and pollution.

This is part of the problem and I think it is a deliberate ploy to confuse climate with environment just to get more people on board. Plastic bags are an environmental problem and then only if they are not disposed of correctly. As with other environmental issues we can try to take sensible mitigating steps to minimise our impact on it. Covering the land with windmills and solar panels is just not doing it. We do not need to spend billions trying to reduce a gas on a hypothesis based on models that have yet to replicate real life.

“There are many more examples, but as one of the students said yesterday “Why bother teaching us science in school if politicians won’t listen to the scientists?””

But you would prefer to listen to a 16-year-old girl with no scientific education at all who heads a millenarian cult who claim humanity will become extinct in 25 years, a view which no scientist at all agrees with ?

I saw a group of the truants on the tube – all from a private school, white, middle-class – Andy’s type of people.

Actually, I’d be happy if the traitors have their way: I don’t want any kind of a ‘deal’ with the EU. It would just be a fudged can-kicking. If we do not grab full independence now, whatever the temporary cost, we have probably lost it (and our longterm comparative advantage) for ever.
When dealing with the EU, arm’s length is best, and our perpetual motto should be:Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

I would rather take a step in the right direction by ceasing to be a party to the EU treaties, knowing that we would still need to take at least one further step to improve on the new treaties with the EU, than end up stuck in the EU.

I have no problem with children protesting but I’d prefer them to be making suggestions that they can do and start to persuade their parents to do and protest on a Saturday with their teachers (then that is a legitimate voluntary protest from these workers paid out of our pockets). A protest isn’t legitimate on a public sector paid day off work (or do we actually deduct the day as unpaid leave)? Who paid for the buses? Why do they have to travel to protest the hypocrisy much better they explain what they want the public to do on Saturday in their local town centres off the roads.

Yes Peter why do folks want more than 2 children . Why do people want to breed like rabbits and then claim poverty for their children ? We need space, green space, land with new houses and more self sufficiency. Land for allotments and educate the children in self sufficiency and relate maths , biochemistry , biology , geology to those ends….Growing food and helping the environment.

Does that include cutting down the rainforests with subsidies from the EU to grow more palm oil so they have more to use in their petrol and diesel filling station for cars and lorries, with the bankers helping out by getting the money to people in remote areas doing it by way of their mobile phones?

How much longer is this going to carry on for, should they now not start to take the palm oil back out of their fuel and start replanting the rainforests instead and put right a wrong that they have committed and pay for that wrong.

Why can’t companies and govs find better ways to use their power and peoples money.

You take very sensible measures Sir John. For those of us living in the country the tube and bus are not an option, electric cars are not fit for purpose and are barely green so I will be driving my lovely diesel for a long time yet.

The green lobby has been hijacked by extreme left wing people as witnessed yesterday on the BBC pre lunch politics show when they had a woman on from XR. The bottom line is that they wish to bankrupt the country. The climate change models use made up data and climate change itself is an enormous hoax.

Sadly, many politicians limb on the bandwagon. Meanwhile there have been many in science who have had to leave jobs or been forced out of jobs because they disagree. As one that I know said, ‘when science reaches a consensus it is no longer science’.

As well as 20,000 more police officers, I would suggest several thousand truant officers.

I wish that these people would spend the considerable time they have on their hands to deal with pollution, destruction of habitat and consequent loss of species caused by the expansion of man into every corner of the planet as a result of overpopulation.

Also we need to stop taking every field that becomes available and building houses on it. We are fast concreting over the south east .The area around Chobham is an awful example of this and so I fear is Wokingham.

The internet has the same carbon footprint as air travel, with some well known media platforms getting 27% of their energy from coal fired power stations. You get an interesting reaction when you point this out to climate alarmists and suggesting they should be deprived of their social media addiction, purely in the interests of climate.

I will not take anything significant action until population is brought into the mix. We could all drive american muscle cars and have no effect on the environment if we had a smaller population . The loss of habitat here is due to the establishment’s population increase policy. The environmentalists were always said to be green on the outside red on the inside, here the comrades view climate change as a means to get control and tell us how to live our lives. Our liberty to be done away with by them playing the trump card of Climate Change, unfortunately the Conservatives have jumped on the Eco bandwagon, and rather than challenge the left’s inconsistency, like how do you square your eco stuff with mass immigration driven population increase? And another , their mantra that all our ills come from austerity , when they are suggesting GDP growth is the enemy of climate change, they say me too. The Conservatives have given the Eco loons free reign to to peddle any sort of nonsense on the subject, even when it is contradictory.

Yes, that seems to be the perverse reason amongst a lot of Leave voters, Anon.

In other words, not for any material improvement whatsoever for yourself or for your family, but because you suppose that leaving the European Union will cause displeasure for people of whom you are envious, or dislike for some reason.

Your post is easily misunderstood as meaning the opposite of what you intended though, as I found.

‘I have cut food miles when buying from local shops. I now buy all my temperate foods from local or British sources to cut down lorry, ferry and airfreight transport.’

A good start. Though, one of the best things you can do to help the environment (and your own health, and animal welfare) is to support farmers that produce food through natural processes, and to buy directly from them.

Hopefully you can help re-direct government policy away from large-scale industrialised and factory farming, and support these ‘natural’ producers instead (discussed at length in previous posts last month).

I have just keyed-in ‘organic farms near Wokingham’ – this gives a long list of farms, farm-shops, box-schemes, organic stores (see top 10 organic shops in Winnersh), pick-your-own, and more – well worth looking into.
Good hunting.

John, all excellent stuff. Little things help such as our supermarket over a decade ago gave all their regular food shoppers insulated bags, I have four and wash and reuse them every week and I have one big fabric bag that I use for regular shopping and a large boot bag, stopped using plastic bags way before charging. I only shop once per week. I’ve not flown for two years and can’t stand being lectured to about climate change by people that fly every month.

I would suggest these children, if serious about wanting change, could make a start by going to schools within walking distance of their homes and walk to and fro, if there is no school nearby to walk or cycle to can they persuade their parents to move home if it’s so important to them they must lead from the front.

They should all go to bed by 9pm and stop using electricity from that time, no heating at night in their homes and only in the winter from Oct to Mar only heating come on just an hour before they rise. Make sure they turn lights off when they leave a room. Only have one tv in the home.

Suggest next year for 2020 THEY don’t fly on holiday on a voluntary basis and give the planet a years breather from their activities.

I don’t see any of this as a hardship for them, I didn’t fly until I was 18 and did all of these things as a child when our carbon footprint was a lot smaller than theirs as we didn’t have mobile phones with batteries, no such thing as cheap clothes and full wardrobes, most food was cooked from fresh from local butchers and markets sold in brown paper bags, our milk was in recycled bottles from local dairies sourced from local farms.

Lead the change yourselves, this doesn’t need legislation it Needs genuine action and they can do it.

I believe that every council should provide an/a area/location where “stuff” can be left (from pieces of leftover wood to unwanted consumer items) and from which anyone can come to collect free of any charges, rather than simply providing large bins where everything goes straight to the landfill.

Back in the early seventies I found a dump where this was feasible and I was able to obtain very useable pieces of furniture in the days when I simply could not afford to buy such items.

In the end, however, more important than how people live will be how many people are trying to live on our planet.

See that you might have the whip taken away from you if you do not toe the line in the party and vote for the surrender plan if and where BJ bringing it the HOC to be voted on, how do you feel about that and no more speaking out against gov policy on Brexit or is it Bino.

I am confident that JR will vote against any modified W A deal, otherwise he has wasted an awful lot of his time to make points on this site, and will lose the support of those leavers who have voted for him over the years.

Its good that you plant trees.
However your government spends £1bn per annum subsidy for forests to be cut down and sent half way round the world to be burnt in this country, bowing to pressure from eco-anarchists.
Wood is a solar generated fuel (in the same way that coal, gas, oil, PV and wind are). However cutting down forests can cause unintended consequences.

“Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said on Friday that negotiations are still far from a deal that could resolve the Irish backstop, since there is a “wide gap” between the UK and the EU, and Brussels is “still waiting for serious proposals” from London … ”

Does anyone honestly believe that the Irish government would ever willingly accept any future negotiated arrangement which did not give them what they have wanted from the start – keeping as much of the UK as possible permanently subjugated to as much EU law as possible – and which Theresa May also wanted, and agreed to give Leo Varadkar, under the baneful influence of UK business pressure groups such as the CBI?

So once again I repeat what I have been saying for nearly three years now, most recently in this comment on September 1 replying to Peter Wood:

“Peter, but it long ago became clear that the EU would be so intransigent over the Irish border that there was unlikely to be any point in the UK even trying to negotiate anything beyond some basic practical and technical arrangements to try to keep trade and other contacts going with minimum disruption.

And by “long ago” I mean November 2017, for example … ”

With references back to comments which were published on this blog at that time, the first of which comments started:

“On the TV this morning it was stated that the UK government is “desperate” to move on to trade talks, but this would be vetoed by the Irish government unless the UK government committed to keeping the UK in both the Single Market and the Customs Union.”

And went on to argue:

“So we should now say that rather than kowtow to the stupid destructive intransigence of the EU we will fall back on WTO trade rules and only seek agreements on the practical or technical aspects of continuing trade.”

I would add here that there is nothing in Article 50 TEU, or anywhere else in the EU treaties, saying that if a member state decides to withdraw from the EU then it bears the responsibility for solving any problems which its withdrawal may create.

I don’t take holidays, nor prisoners. Our love of our lands has given way to political intrigue of the most cynical genre.
Sir JR you are about as old as myself. You have experienced when green was a darker green due to smog and filth we after the war tolerated basically for want of food, energy and shelter.
Our children coughed and wheezed if not you and I, but we did.
The improvement to our environment has been splendid in the last 60 years ( full stop )
The Green folk are very late in deed to our glorious party.

Quite right Bigneil. Just come back from Sussex to find housing going up everywhere and the roads gridlocked and our friends telling us they are waiting longer and longer for hospital appointments and doctors.

JR’s list shows that common sense actions – some of which may be easier said than done or (in the case of foreign holidays) a matter of different personal choice – do not need coercion. This is in marked contrast to the attitude of the present day environmental movement who show every sign of wanting to tax, ban and regulate for the sake of it, and have chosen “climate change” – that lazy shorthand mantra for allegedly harmful man made global warming – as their means of doing so.

If the government wants to save the world, make a business environment that incentivises innovation and competition in green technologies. Incentivise students to study STEM subjects at school and university. I assure you most people aren’t going to be content being dictated to by authoritarian climate alarmists, but they sure as heck would buy into the cause – literally – if the financial incentives were there.

The stride of the government to have more GDP and companies to make more product cheaply to sell to people, which are just throwaways, most people wear their clothes once then back in the washing machine and dryer, the neoliberal ideas having to lead the world to all this destruction and their no going back.

They want China, India and Africa and else to have everything that you have in the west and still make a loss.

Yesterday, in the centre of the small country town where I live, a demonstration took place promoting action on so called climate change. There was a sizeable crowd present amongst whom was a large contingent of school children, none of them wearing school uniform ie they obviously had no intention of going back to classes ‘après le demo’. These young children(looked like Years 6-9), were shouting out(supported by a PA system), this chant:

“What do we want…no pollution. When do we want it…we want it now!”

repeated endlessly.

I walked up to the organiser(early 40’s, clearly not at work), and told him he was breaking the law by sanctioning children in playing truant. He grinned inanely at me, and mumbled some incoherent ersatz explanation. A very middle class woman of about the same age(also clearly not at work), then told me that what the children were doing was more important than school!
I told her that she was complicit in child abuse.
I then approached a couple of community police(one oldish man and a young woman), and told them that a deliberate flouting of law relating to children was being perpetrated. Their response was that they had been told not to intervene, but to just to ‘keep an eye on things’.

School children receive 5.5 hours of lessons per day for 190 days a year, of which about 4 hours a week is devoted to the most important subject, namely maths. As this country is somewhere near the bottom of just about every league table published, in maths, I feel really incensed at the stupid, irresponsible, half baked, middle class attitudes prevailing out there, that a day off school doesn’t matter. These people are completely mad(probably ‘head in the clouds’ remainers), who would be the first to condemn teachers for taking strike action. And, what’s more, they are wilfully politicizing children into irresponsible behaviours.

Yep, that’s how it is with these green, lefty liberal and non conformist types – they’re after getting their hands on the kids.

The tactic here is to indoctrinate another generation into their perverse ideology, get them while they’re young, as it were.

Mind you, the smug grinned teacher you refer to needs his card marking by the sounds of it.

Re the Police. You have the right to express your concerns to your force’s Chief Constable by writing. Remind him / her that an offence was committed and witnessed by law enforcement officers. You may also request under FOI to be provided with their explanation as to why they allowed perpetration of the offence.

You might also write to your local authority requiring an explanation as to how budget accounted for policing the incident.

Additionally try the education department (use FOI) to clarify their policy on allowing teachers to break the truancy laws and use minors for political means.

Being “Green”, to me, means exactly what it says on the tin. Grow more trees and create more open spaces filled with wild life and wild flowers. Much more preferable to the land grabs to build new roads and new housing estates sometime later.
According to scientific research, some 80,000 acres of Tropical Rain Forests are cut down each DAY with damaging effects on our climate and on the wild life. And why are they removing all of this forestry? To ‘ save’ the planet? It is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul here only more serious because actual life on Earth is affected and not just the monetary considerations and the palm oil returns.
The UK does not have a “Tropical Rain Forest”, of course but it is still being deforested at an alarming rate.
I trust the new Conservative Government will soon restore our ‘Green and Pleasant Land’ to its rightful state.
Since this report of 2016 things have improved but nowhere near enough.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/06/england-deforestation-state-lack-tree-planting

This situation must be addressed and can only after we have left the control of the Brussels cabal, when WE can actually decide what is best for OUR Country. Roll on Halloween.

And where will all the food be grown if we plant trees and create meadows and the like on good farm land.and everywhere else they will grow. Grow buy and eat more of our own is the cry heard, buy local is the cry. ‘Sorry Sir’ is the answer. ‘You demanded we plant trees. And sorry you can’t see that nice view any more. You wanted trees, remember’.

You havin’ a larf? I’ve told you 50 Billion times not to exaggerate. Do you think mankind is so stupid that they will grow forests across all of our agricultural land? This is Century 21 and in Britain it is not 1200 AD at Easter Island. There is “Living” proof that deforestation can and did damage health. It certainly destroyed habitation there.

Where is all this fertile land that is currently not being properly used in your view? Perhaps you could identify it by showing us a plan. Perhaps you imagine also planting trees all over the high moors and heathland and poor grazing land.

“Britain was dubbed “the dirty man of Europe” before it joined the EU in 1973 because it was the only country in western Europe that failed to control pollution from cars, power stations and farming, tried to undermine European pesticide controls, and evaded nitrate regulations and bathing water directives. I well remember nordic countries accusing us of destroying their forests because of the acid rain caused by our dirty factory emissions. Farmers in my region regularly poisoned the atmosphere with stubble burning until they were stopped.

Another thing we have to be grateful for because of our EU membership. Will we return to our old ways with farmers and businessmen allowed to do as they please and the establishment looking after their own?

Well that’s not right Margaret.
We had the Clean Air Acts as laws way before we joined the Common Market.
And how would any political party get elected if they promised to return to poor environmental practices?
Who would vote for that?

What about Germany’s motor manufacturers ‘defeat’ devices fitted to cars so that they can pass emissions regulations without being detected? What about their operation of dirty Lignite power stations? What about Spain, France, Italy, and Germany who are by far the biggest consumers of pesticides in the European Union? Should we be grateful to the EU for these?

In your hastiness to run Britain down you conveniently overlook all these ‘green’ transgressions. I suppose they do not count in your book.

“Will we return to our old ways with farmers and businessmen allowed to do as they please and the establishment looking after their own?”

So, you believe said people were behaving themselves before brexit ?

We had one PM who sold all the gold reserves and wasted the money, we had another who told porkies to get the country into an illegal war, and a boot kisser who tried to sell the country down the river by capitulation.

I’d like to see more people either growing their own, or buying only British. Having less dependancy on imports gives us a much better bargaining position.

Also I don’t believe there is anything we import from Ireland that we couldn’t produce ourselves, so we can start by cutting them off. No doubt that would harm the Irish economy, but maybe they should have thought about that before they ‘bravely’ insulted us from behind the EU’s coat tails.

“Glad to see you buying British and local produce. I adopted that policy a while back, and I have to admit it is well worth it.”

I hope you are aware that most of it is harvested by imported labour. Now that workers from Eastern Europe are leaving they will have to be replaced by those from further afield so necessitating yet more pollution from air travel etc.

I live in East Anglia which is one of our main agricultural regions so I know what I’m talking about. Local people will NOT work under the sort of conditions on offer here.

Ms Howard – remember the days when home-grown student labour was the norm? When young people considered themselves lucky if they could find a job picking or harvesting? And have you noticed that young people actually don’t want to supplement their grants or parental handouts with real work any more because they’d rather go off to ‘find themselves’ in a gap year? Thus more air travel, etc, by those who are telling the rest of us to ‘save the world’.
Probably your Andy did just the same.

Workers coming into this country legally will be welcome if they’re needed – that’s been made clear. Didn’t you know? Where do you get your ‘information’?

According to an article in the
Telegraph our state schools are still turning out over 100,000 pupils per
year who cannot even achieve a single decent GCSE grade in any subject. This
is the worst performance in the EU28. State school teachers would do better to concentrate on teaching pupils the basics rather than indoctrinating the with liberal left ideas. The children would have been better off improving their maths or English rather than taking a day off to carry placards in the streets.

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (God’s promise, after the worldwide Flood of Noah: Genesis 8:22).
Being a good steward of the Creation is obviously right, makes good sense and is a joyful duty.
However, I’m convinced the current Climate Alarmism is a sinister globalist agenda, with the object of one world government under an all-pervasive oppressive regime. You will not be able to buy or sell, if you do not comply with its edicts, and I believe the EU is the precursor to this system.
Especially in recent times, a good-sounding, plausible cause is often adopted to deceive humanity on a wide scale. It’s a case of “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 5:6). i.e. a wanton rejection of godly, biblical knowledge, the original bedrock of our culture.

It is by no means a given that British agri-businesses are much interested in home markets, or in avoiding food miles themselves – not unnaturally, they want to export. When the Russian embargo began, the apple-growers of Kent protested their profits would be hit. Then suddenly (and it cannot have been mere coincidence) Kent apples – which had been notably absent from the supermarkets that autumn, and super-expensive where found – made a reappearance on the UK shelves, at their normal seasonal prices. (Of course, one might have toured the Kent countryside and picked up cheap bags of them at farm gates, but few of us can afford the time or petrol to do that.)
On the other side of the coin, imported NZ and SA apples are also excellent and reliably plentiful. If we are to restrict ourselves to buying ‘local’, or to cutting ‘food miles’ , we shall be denying ourselves many basics that are indeed produced here – but for export.
The government cannot force producers to sell to the home market at fixed prices – that was tried in the 1940s, and it failed miserably.

If WTO rules were altered so that exports from dirty economies could be subjected to higher tariffs, then yes we could.

Climate change conferences are very environmentally unfriendly. All those first class air miles, all those wasteful upmarket hotels, all those trees slaughtered to provide paper for numerous copies of position papers and agreements. Better to use video conferencing.

And how about tight immigration control as our contribution to world ZPG. And a foreign aid policy of “Send them condoms and nothing else”.

There’s a lot more that we can including nagging incessantly the real villains.

Dear Sir John,
Hope government prioritises planting of millions of trees in this country.
1. Environmental reasons
2. Aesthetic reasons (how much more beautiful and interesting a street looks with trees).
3. Mental health. The green in trees is scientifically proven to increase happy chemicals in the brain (not forgetting how the aesthetic value alone makes people happier).
Lastly, my friend wanted to plant a tree in his garden in London and his local council wanted to charge him £400 to do this (I think it was £400 and I think he said they had to do it). This is criminal (for a variety of reasons).

I was a coach passenger from South East England into London Victoria on a day London had shut every single bridge in London to coaches, thats right every single bridge. And they plan to do the same next year, indeed they want to do it more than once.

This was done to allow a cycle race to take place apparently.

It is not “green” to throw vast numbers of passengers off their coach at Vauxhall, and force a lot of them to get cabs from there, or onto already overcrowded tube trains.

Stuff like this displays the hypocrisy of the neo leftists running our country.

“Stuff like this displays the hypocrisy of the neo leftists running our country.”

Yep that about sums it up.

“This was done to allow a cycle race to take place apparently.”

Fine, since they seem to think they have rights over everybody else on the road……make the bastards pay road tax and insurance like the rest of us have to. They should also have display a DVLA issued licence plate.

On the spot fines and confiscation of cycles should be the norm when they refuse to use cycle lanes…..especially cycle lanes provided at public’s cost.

Leading by example is always a fine policy.
Thanks to the Labour Party of the 70’s at that time, we were called ” The sick man of Europe” and it was plain to see why. I do not recall being made the “Dirty Man of Europe” although it was warranted.
Bodies not buried and rotting rubbish piled high in Leicester Square and the country itself in economic turmoil, dominated by Trade Union actions. We had to overlook certain clean air policies .
It was at that time, we the people, were asked to decide if we should stay in the then EEC, aka The Common Market. We elected to do so. However we were forced into voting on a lie.
We thought we were voting to stay in a FTA and persuaded by Ted Heath the PM that there was no truth in the ‘no’ voters claim that the EEC was to be insidiously developed into a political organisation, now known as the EU
Since then we have been subjected to the EU Rules and Regulations regarding pollution and then the now discredited AGW movement which has been replaced by the costly fight to prevent climate change. Insanity or arrogance?
We are very capable of minding our own business, especially when it comes to protecting our atmosphere. A succession of Acts were made to protect Britain BEFORE we joined the EEC.
We did not need any advice from Brussels back then nor do we need it now.
“Green” examples made by SJ are no doubt practiced by many others here each day.
We must allow Nature to take care of our weather and out climate BUT Pollution is another matter altogether. And that is down to mankind to sort out.
So why does the EU not focus more on air and sea and land pollution and dump this crazy crusade to Prevent Climate Change.

Unfortunately, Mr Redwood, like all Conservative MPs, you largely operate wholly within the ideological parameters of the far left. You’re all for racial equality, sex equality, same-sex marriage, transgender promotion to 5-year-olds, usually passionately against national sovereignty – and now this – too weak to hold the link against the environmental nonsense. See Delingpole and Lawson for the details. When you ran for the leadership, the dance of the 7 veils showed you had nothing distinctive to offer. Do you have any opinions on anything that are not given to you by the Far Left?

Can all Govt ministers Estimated Personal Carbon footprint be published? vs their Govt work? vs Average UK citizen? I think it may show up who is really doing anything.. it may be the people aren’t and -some- pollies are…. could get in someone from a University to set up a spreadsheet so it is easy to fill out.

About John Redwood

John Redwood won a free place at Kent College, Canterbury, and graduated from Magdalen College Oxford. He is a Distinguished fellow of All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has set up an investment management business, was both executive and non executive chairman of a quoted industrial PLC, and chaired a manufacturing company with factories in Birmingham, Chicago, India and China. He is the MP for Wokingham, first elected in 1987.